Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM) annually recognizes the pioneers who are shaping the future of cybersecurity with its prestigious Global InfoSec Awards. Recently, at the RSA Conference 2024 held in San Francisco, CDM announced the winners of its 12th annual awards, honoring the most innovative and forward-thinking companies in the industry.

Active Directory (AD), a Microsoft Windows directory service, helps maintain a robust security perimeter within enterprise environments. It helps your business enforce security policies, assign permissions and mitigate security risks within the network. Let’s say your business’s IT infrastructure is a fortress, wherein AD acts as the gatekeeper controlling who enters and what they have access to.

Picture this: a high-security vault containing your company’s sensitive data. Unfortunately, the door is wide open, allowing anyone to enter unnoticed. This is the scary truth for firms that fail to audit Active Directory (AD). Why is an unmonitored AD such a concern? Well, your Active Directory is the central hub for user access and authentication. It stores the keys to your kingdom, such as passwords, group memberships, and sensitive accounts.

One of your organization’s most essential components is Active Directory (AD). Here we’ll look at some basic yet best practices for securing Active Directory infrastructure, backed up by statistics. As, in today’s digital landscape, cyber threats lurk around every corner, protecting your organization’s Active Directory infrastructure is more than a priority—it’s a requirement. Let’s not delay any longer – straight into the list we go!

95% of Fortune 1000 organizations use Active Directory (AD) to organize their IT systems. This statistic emphasizes the relevance of AD in modern enterprise networks. AD, as a centralized database including user accounts, group objects, workstation objects, security information, and much more, is critical for managing and securing IT resources. However, the very capabilities that make Active Directory so important, also make it an ideal target for cyber criminals.

What you need to know about Active Directory and its critical role in any cybersecurity strategy.

Active Directory (AD) is the cornerstone of any on-premises or hybrid Microsoft environment. It stores information about users, computers and other objects, and provides vital services that enable employees to be productive and business processes to run. This article covers the Active Directory basics you need to know.

Group Policy is a feature of Microsoft Windows operating systems that helps administrators manage and secure users and computers in Active Directory environments. Group Policy settings are grouped into Group Policy objects (GPOs) and applied to computer and user objects within the scope of the GPO. For example, Group Policy objects can be used to manage: This guide explains the key elements of Group Policy management.

Many ask, what is Kerberos? Kerberos is an authentication protocol. It is designed for client-server applications and requires mutual verification. It is the default protocol used for logging into a Windows machine that is part of a domain, relies on a secure communication channel between the client and the Domain Controller (DC). Windows updates address security concerns such as vulnerabilities in this channel, ensuring that the user database stored on the DC is protected.